Saturday, April 20, 2013

Jingle BOM Quilt Pieced Block No. 1 and School Musical Wrap-Up

"Jingle" BOM Quilt Pieced Block #1 Completed!

I managed to finish my Jingle BOM Pieced Block No. 1 today after the kids' play wrapped up. Since I'm catching up on this BOM (Block of the Month), I'm doing the blocks out of order and have already completed Pieced Block No. 2. After this, I have the first two appliqued blocks to do and a big, scary, appliqued center medallion for the quilt, and then I'll be caught up. The pattern was designed by Erin Russek of One Piece at a Time, and you can visit her blog here to catch up if you'd like to join in.I've never done one of these BOM things before, but I'm finding that there are some advantages to working this way. For instance, usually when I start a quilt, I pick out all of my fabrics and cut out every single piece before I start sewing anything together. This way, doing only one block at a time, I find that I'm not rushing as much because I don't have an intimidating stack of little squares and triangles waiting to be pieced together. I am doing a lot more frog stitching (Rip it! Rip it!), taking seams out and redoing them until they are perfect before moving on to the next unit. I can't stand when my crisp little triangle points get eaten in the seam, and I want those seam intersections to match up perfectly. Well, this year's school musical officially wrapped up after the final matinee performance this afternoon. Dads disassembled the sets while moms sorted out costumes, and now the Willy Wonka Jr. production is just a memory. I thought I would be relieved, since the late night rehearsals (and even later nights fighting with small actors who think theatre should exempt them from other schoolwork) have been running me pretty ragged. Naturally I'm glad the let's-make-lederhosen experience is behind me (what was I thinking?!). I volunteered as a "child-wrangler" for two of the four performances, which entailed patrolling backstage and shushing actors who were not currently on stage. It turns out that I am a terrible child-wrangler -- since the kids were all quiet, I sat down in the hallway where I could intimidate them with my presence (hopefully) and control them with an occasional scowl or shush. I took out my iPad and stylus, opened the Paper by 53 drawing app, and started practicing quilting designs:

Before long, I had a flock of kids huddled around watching me draw, which I thought was great, because they were quiet, right? Except that some of them were so interested in my doodles that they missed their cues and did not appear on stage when they were supposed to. Oops. Don't tell the director -- I don't want to be the first parent volunteer ever to be fired!

I don't think the kids were as interested in my drawings as they were in the app I was using to draw them. In any case, the show is done, the lederhosen is done, and the two pieced blocks for the Jingle quilt are behind me now. That makes next week a fresh page, perfect for starting something new -- like needle-turn applique! I may sneak in a little free-motion quilting on Monday, now, too. After all of that doodling, I feel like quilting some feathers!Enjoy what's left of your weekend!